Hi! This semester at the TU Berlin, I’ll help teach the course “Numerical simulation techniques in engineering” or in its original German title - “Numerische Simulationsverfahren im Ingenieurwesen”. It’s a fascinating topic, you should come!

The work builds upon the results of two recent studies on the influence of friction by normal and sideways oscillations. The findings are rewritten to a more compact form and the results for both oscillation modes are presented side by side in a consistent manner. It is shown that the macroscopic coefficient of friction is only a function of a dimensionless sliding velocity and a dimensionless oscillation amplitude for the considered model. Also, the energy efficiency is characterized for both oscillation modes for the first time by comparing the total energy which includes the superimposed oscillations with the energy needed for the motion without the additional oscillations.

Below you'll find a link to what I believe is a great paper on the topic of adhesion (open access). For instance, if you ever wondered how the adhesive force actually depends on the shape of the contact, this paper has the answers!

Hi! Here are a few links which may be useful if you want to get started building self-balancing robots! I found that with the components below it's easy to achieve some nice results very quickly (<5h)!

I used the Arduino 101 to control the robot. It's quite amazing because you get the 6-axis accelerometer and gyro directly on the board. Everything you need to use the sensors in your code is very well-documented here.

Click here for more information on the competition and click here for more information on the Flying V.

Justus

The ceremony was held by BBC reporter Stephanie McGovern (1st f. l.), RAeS President Martin Broadhurst (2nd f. l.), Director for Environmental Research at the European Commission Manuela Soares (6th f. l.) and Secretary General of the Aerospace and Defense Industries Association of Europe Jan Pie (7th f. l.).

Check out the website of Sentient Blue. It's a startup company which will compete in the Little Cup, the C Class Sailboat World Championship, in September 2015. Over the next months I'll start to help with a bit of work on some of the company's future projects.